Tommy Broughan (Dublin Bay North, Independent)
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197. To ask the Minister for Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government the funding provided to each local community development committee, LCDC, to address youth unemployment; and the number of young persons in each LCDC area supported to date under the SICAP programme in tabular form. [18493/17]

Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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My Department provides funding to support young, unemployed persons through the Social Inclusion and Community Activation Programme (SICAP), which is the largest social inclusion intervention of its kind in the State.  SICAP was rolled out in April 2015 and will run until 31 December 2017. Its aim is to tackle poverty, social exclusion and long-term unemployment through local engagement and partnership between disadvantaged individuals, community organisations, public sector agencies and other stakeholders.

The Programme allocation for 2017 is €37.5 million of which €3 million is provided for under the European Social Fund (ESF) Programme for Employability, Inclusion and Learning (PEIL) 2014-2020.

Young people are primarily supported under goals two and three of SICAP, which deal with supporting marginalised individuals to participate in lifelong learning and to become more job-ready, respectively. SICAP responds to the strategic needs for education and training among disadvantaged groups across the spectrum of life-long learning, from informal to formally accredited education and training, including career advice, job preparing/job search, assisting beneficiaries acquire pre-employment supports such as foundation skills and working on job-ready supports such as CV preparation, interview skills, work placements, mentoring, literacy and numeracy, entrepreneurship supports, as well as achieving defined outcomes of placing people into employment, tailored to the needs of the individual client and in accordance with a personal action plan. Young people aged 15-24, who are Not in Employment, Education or Training (NEETs), are a dedicated target group under SICAP and are therefore targeted to receive support under goals two and three of the Programme.

SICAP is delivered in 51 Lots throughout the country. It is a key intervention for the harder to reach, with delivery in each area (or Lot) overseen and managed by the relevant Local Community Development Committee (LCDC) in the local authority area. The numbers of young persons supported, or due to be supported (in 2017), in each Lot area, are provided below: